For Governor of NJ

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Jersey_gubernatorial_election,_2017#cite_note-16

The only one on the list that I like is Rush Holt

Its a shaky list. Im hoping someone worthy steps up.

I would like to nominate Jon Stewart. Do I have a second from anyone?

jeffhandy said:

I would like to nominate Jon Stewart. Do I have a second from anyone?

Only if it doesn't interfere with his duties at his farm sanctuary.

Could there possibly be a worse choice than Steve Sweeney. Just what we need is a Norcross pawn in the governor's chair.

So far I like Senator Ray Lesniak. If Senator Cory Booker were an option I'd probably chose him.

Anyone else keep getting sponsored posts from Steve Fulop in their Facebook feed? I've been getting them every day for about a month. I had no idea who the guy was. Now it makes sense.

jeffhandy said:

I would like to nominate Jon Stewart. Do I have a second from anyone?

Second!

Could you please explain why you think Sweeney's friendship with Norcross is that troubling? (I'm being sincere. I really want to know why you think a close relationship with Norcross is worse than a close relationship with, say, the NJEA.)

ml1 said:

Could there possibly be a worse choice than Steve Sweeney. Just what we need is a Norcross pawn in the governor's chair.

Oh dear.

It's late. I'll have to get to this later. There's just so much. I can't believe you think there's any equivalence between Norcross and the NJEA.

I can't even...

Runner_Guy said:

Could you please explain why you think Sweeney's friendship with Norcross is that troubling? (I'm being sincere. I really want to know why you think a close relationship with Norcross is worse than a close relationship with, say, the NJEA.)

ml1 said:

Could there possibly be a worse choice than Steve Sweeney. Just what we need is a Norcross pawn in the governor's chair.

in a few minutes, some links are easy to find:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alex-law/the-untold-tragedy-of-cam_b_9401640.html

http://www.nj.com/opinion/index.ssf/2015/04/opinion_why_culture_of_corruption_persists_in_new.html

http://www.bluejersey.com/2012/02/george-norcross-a-tale-of-greed-lust-for-power-and-corruption/

http://www.phillymag.com/articles/george-norcross-man-destroyed-democracy/

Ml1,

There's a tendency among many Democrats to look at South Jersey Democratic political unity and assume that it's because of political patronage and dirty politics. Doubtless there's some of that going on, but what's less often admitted is that the South Jersey Democratic machine is really just "moderate Democrats" who want social justice, but who also worry about taxes, sometimes see public sector unions as special interests, and believe that taxes can be excessive enough to dampen economic growth.

Hence the fact that there are northern Democrats who vote with South Jersey even though Norcross doesn't support them at all. Hence the fact that the South Jersey Democrats sometimes work with Republicans. Hence the fact that there are regular voters who don't benefit from political patronage at all who like Sweeney. (and there are a heck of a lot of times, for good or ill, when the South Jersey Democrats are on the same side as other Democrats.)

Progressive Democrats like to say "South Jersey Machine" and "Boss Norcross" because "machine" and "boss" have negative connotations. They emphasize the patronage. But there are principled differences between the factions in NJ too.

Based on the articles you shared George Norcross seems like a mixture of good and bad, but the Alex Law article "The Untold Tragedy of Camden" is totally inaccurate and Law knows nothing about taxes or corporate subsidies. The reason it's an "untold tragedy" is because the story Alex Law tells is bulls**t and journalists try not to tell stuff that isn't true.

http://maplewood.worldwebs.com/forums/discussion/way-to-go-sweeney?page=next&limit=0#discussion-replies-3294772

ml1 said:

in a few minutes, some links are easy to find:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alex-law/the-untold-tragedy-of-cam_b_9401640.html


http://www.nj.com/opinion/index.ssf/2015/04/opinion_why_culture_of_corruption_persists_in_new.html


http://www.bluejersey.com/2012/02/george-norcross-a-tale-of-greed-lust-for-power-and-corruption/


http://www.phillymag.com/articles/george-norcross-man-destroyed-democracy/

Where's Fulop on PARCC? I'm voting for Murphy, (or in his absence just about anyone else who will get rid of it), both in general and as a graduation requirement. It's my top issue next year. Sweeney, aside from the South Jersey issue (which for me has MUCH more to do with being hoagie-eating Wildwood-going Eagles-loving quasi-Philadelphians who have NOTHING in common with the majority of the state than it does anything else), is much too PARCC and charter friendly.

I suppose the answer to my question is that there are people who see nothing negative about Sweeney's alliance with Norcross. But I'm bothered by the cronyism even if nothing illegal is going on. It's not transparent, and I don't think we need to elect a governor whose first priority is likely to be a relative handful of politically connected associates. At least with an endorsement from the NJEA or other public sector union, voters know what that means. I know the NJEA wants to preserve pensions and compensation for its members. What does George Norcross want from the state? How am I supposed to know?

Arguably Norcross and Sweeney did as much as anyone (with some help from North Jersey Dems) to give us another term of Chris Christie and his disastrous governance. Why do we want to throw in with these guys again after we're finally rid of Christies' reign of error?

Phil Murphy was stumping on a train trip I took to Washington a few months ago and I gotta say he pretty much gave me the creeps.

I would have a very hard time voting for Sweeney. Furlop is interesting and will probably get my vote.

I have met Murphy -- and he can be very charismatic and I know he has a lot of money but I think he would be better served if he started at a lower level position and had a better working knowledge of the issues.

And If Codey decided to run, I would vote for him over any of the others.

Ml1,

You have some interesting points about the lack of transparency. I suppose it's one thing for a boss to be a elected official with some accountability and transparency and entirely another for a boss to be a businessman like George Norcross. You are also right that the public ought to know exactly what a union endorsement means.

Then again, let's say that all the worst things we've heard about Norcross and Sweeney are true, Sweeney does nothing without Norcross' approval, and a "Governor Sweeney" is just a cloak for "Governor Norcross."

Ok, then SweeneyNorcross have done some things I think the state needed. They passed a property tax cap that's (arguably) worked, reformed salary arbitration, reformed teacher tenure, and started to reform pensions. When Atlantic City needed a bailout, they insisted that there be some reforms to Atlantic City's bloated government, lifeguard pensions, and exorbitant salaries. Sweeney and Christie even worked together to raise the EITC.

Of course if you disagree with stuff like Pension Reform, then you shouldn't like Sweeney. But as someone who thinks Pension Reform was seriously overdue, for me it's a positive about Sweeney.

If Satan himself were the one ordering Steve Sweeney to support state aid redistribution then that's fine too. Sweeney's (or Satan's) state aid reform is actually really visionary. Not only does he redistribute state aid, he is proposing caps to under-the-radar problems like PILOTing, the calculation of aid caps, and the tax cap.

As for Christie's reelection... Christie had sky high approval ratings in 2012 and 2013, peaking at 75% of the state. There was nothing the Democrats could have done to defeat him.

The Democrats who didn't go all-out for Buono concentrated on legislative races and thanks to that focus and Christie's own neglect of legislative races, the Democrats didn't lose a single seat in 2013, despite Christie's 20 point landslide.

ml1 said:

I suppose the answer to my question is that there are people who see nothing negative about Sweeney's alliance with Norcross. But I'm bothered by the cronyism even if nothing illegal is going on. It's not transparent, and I don't think we need to elect a governor whose first priority is likely to be a relative handful of politically connected associates. At least with an endorsement from the NJEA or other public sector union, voters know what that means. I know the NJEA wants to preserve pensions and compensation for its members. What does George Norcross want from the state? How am I supposed to know?

Arguably Norcross and Sweeney did as much as anyone (with some help from North Jersey Dems) to give us another term of Chris Christie and his disastrous governance. Why do we want to throw in with these guys again after we're finally rid of Christies' reign of error?

I realize that my knowledge of State politics is lacking. I have two questions.

What is PARCC?

Isn't Sweeney a Labor Union official?

PARCC is a Common Core-aligned, computer-based test used to diagnose student growth, teacher effectiveness, and (in 2021), graduation. There are a lot of people who hate it and those people usually don't like charter schools either. The NJEA is opposed to PARCC (and charters). The people who are against PARCC were against it before the test was even released two years ago.

Phil Murphy said this summer that he would drop the PARCC exams if elected and replace PARCC with another computer-based test to be developed specifically for NJ that would also be aligned with NJ's curriculum (which is aligned with the Common Core).

Murphy's profile is to give results in "real time," which I take to mean that maybe he supports more frequent, but shorter tests?

Sweeney is an ironworker. He's private sector.

LOST said:

I realize that my knowledge of State politics is lacking. I have two questions.

What is PARCC?

Isn't Sweeney a Labor Union official?

From http://www.ironworkers.org/who-we-are/leadership-team/stephen-sweeney

Stephen Sweeney was initiated into Local 399 (Camden, N.J.) on December 1, 1977 and gained journeyman status on January 1, 1980. He was the FST/BA of Local 399 before becoming a general organizer effective March 10, 2008, servicing the area of the District Council of Philadelphia and Vicinity and the District Council of Northern New Jersey, as well as handling specific assignments from International Headquarters. Brother Sweeney has been a strong leader as business manager of his local and in his role in state politics. First elected to the New Jersey State Senate in 2001 as the representative of the Third Legislative District of New Jersey, he has served as senate president since 2010. On January 13, 2014, Brother Sweeney was appointed general vice president of the International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental and Reinforcing Iron Workers.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It is my opinion that Sweeney would sell his mother to further his political career. See, he has no soul, so he can't sell that... He is a Norcross wannabe all the way.

marylago said:

From http://www.ironworkers.org/who-we-are/leadership-team/stephen-sweeney

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It is my opinion that Sweeney would sell his mother to further his political career. See, he has no soul, so he can't sell that... He is a Norcross wannabe all the way.

I see this stuff about Sweeney often but I don't understand it. Can you explain to me why you think Sweeney would "sell his mother"? When did Sweeney cross the line from being a politician with whom you have some disagreements and being a metaphysical monstrosity?

What are your priority issues? And frankly, are you a public employee?

I understand the controversy about standardized tests and understand their utility and also how they can be over used. I'm also skeptical of Charter Schools, but am no expert on the subject and remain open minded.

I support Organized Labor and don't see a significant difference between public and private sector employees. Workers are workers.

As to Gubernatorial candidates I'm more interested in their positions on taxes, infra structure and social issues.

Runner_Guy said:

When did Sweeney cross the line from being a politician with whom you have some disagreements and being a metaphysical monstrosity?

When he went from opposing reducing pension benefits to supporting Christie's benefit reductions. That happened when he realized the public support was for the Christie changes.

Then, after the public employees got stiffed, Christie pulled the rug out and withheld the pension contributions the state was supposed to make. Now, the pension situation is worse than ever. The Supreme Court in its pension ruling, agreed that the pensioners are entitled to their money. When the pension fund goes belly-up, the result will be a sharp tax increase or severe reduction in public services.

Sweeney supported Christie until he didn't.

jerseyjack said:

Runner_Guy said:

When did Sweeney cross the line from being a politician with whom you have some disagreements and being a metaphysical monstrosity?

When he went from opposing reducing pension benefits to supporting Christie's benefit reductions. That happened when he realized the public support was for the Christie changes.

Then, after the public employees got stiffed, Christie pulled the rug out and withheld the pension contributions the state was supposed to make. Now, the pension situation is worse than ever. The Supreme Court in its pension ruling, agreed that the pensioners are entitled to their money. When the pension fund goes belly-up, the result will be a sharp tax increase or severe reduction in public services.

Sweeney supported Christie until he didn't.

And yet, he promised the unions that he would support a constitutional amendment to make payments to the pension fund, and then failed to post it. BTW, I was surprised that he would even consider introducing legislation supporting the constitutional amendment; I would think that's political suicide. But it continues his talking out of both sides of his mouth.

Runner_Guy said:

What are your priority issues? And frankly, are you a public employee?

Frankly? I think that would be up to me to be frank. I don't think that you can be frank in a question. You can be bold, brazen, rude, but not frank...

We need to import the Governor of Rhode Island or clone her.

I hate PARCC, but saying you are going to drop it and just get another exam to replace it is not dealing with the problem and will probably be a huge waste of money going to the same corporations that brought us PARCC.

(reply to someone who mentioned Phil Murphy saying we will drip PARCC and develop another test for New Jersey)

I don’t think the three major Dem candidates have any substantial differences on infrastructure and social issues. All three support raising the gas tax. The only difference might be on the PennEast pipeline; I know Sweeney is for PennEast, but I don’t know where Fulop and Murphy are. If other people perceive differences on infrastructure and social issues, I'd be interested in reading.

On taxes I think there are wider differences. The three are closer to each other than they would be to any Republican. Sweeney and Murphy clearly support raising taxes on high-earners and I assume Fulop does too. However, I think it’s fair to say that Sweeney is the most taxpayer sensitive, then Fulop, and then Murphy is the least sensitive.

1. Sweeney talks about the pain of property taxes on the campaign trail and has a plan to redistribute and increase state aid so that taxpayer stress is ameliorated in NJ’s most tax-stressed communities. Sweeney was ahead of the curve on pension reform, which is a good thing or a terrible thing, depending on your perspective.

Sweeney also has said things indicating that he believes that NJ taxes induce outmigration and slow economic growth.

Sweeney was a supporter of Corzine and Christie’s property tax caps.

2. Fulop also sometimes talks about how bad property taxes are and has gone three years in a row in JC without raising municipal taxes. However, I don’t see JC’s situation as similar at all to NJ’s since JC is booming and JC’s municipal government’s revenue is surging mostly due to PILOT payments. Despite not raising taxes, Fulop has been able to increase spending, on police, parks, and urban amenities.

JC’s growth is partly due to massive state subsidization through urban-specific corporate tax breaks and Abbott funding, two facts which Steve Fulop never acknowledges.

Fulop has supported pension reform. JC has a sui generis municipal pension system and Fulop has said the 2010 reforms for the state pension system should apply to JC’s as well.

Anyway, Fulop as councilman and later mayor strenuously opposed doing a reval for Jersey City, even though JC’s last reval was in 1988 and Jersey City had the highest Coefficient of Deviation in NJ. Thousands of people were paying triple the taxes they should while others were paying a third of the taxes they should.

After Fulop became mayor in 2013 he cancelled a reval that was in progress and refused to pay the reval firm.

In 2016 the State Treasury ordered JC to do a reval and regular Jersey Cityans who were overpaying started protesting. When confronted by people who wanted a reval, Fulop said that the only reason anyone wanted a reval was “hatred of me,” and told people who had overassessed properties that their taxes would actually INCREASE after a reval.

Meanwhile, in a farcical sideshow, the reval firm Fulop wouln’t pay sued the city and won a judgment plus legal fees. Fulop has still refused to give up on litigation despite spending millions on legal fees for JC and the reval firm.

Fulop is against redistributing state aid. I hear that he thinks the motivation for redistributing state aid is just “to hurt Jersey City.”

3. Phil Murphy has no public record,but he is against a tax cap. He rarely speaks about property taxes on the campaign trail and doesn’t mention taxes on any of his campaign websites. When asked about property taxes he says they are a problem for low-income people and seniors.

In an interview I saw with Phil Murphy when he was asked about his solution to high property taxes he said he wanted to raise senior rebates.

Murphy says the pension crisis is “100%, 100%, 100% the state’s fault.”

In 2005 Murphy chaired a pension reform commission for Governor Codey. The commission recommended ending some pension abuses, recommended that employees pay for some health care, recommended selling off state assets, but supported COLAs and supported retaining the Defined Benefit system. The commission’s main emphasis was for NJ to raise taxes/divert other spending and simply put many billions more into the system.

Murphy says that California’s economic success despite high taxes proves that a state can have high taxes and still succeed economically.

Murphy is also against redistributing state aid, but he doesn’t say so clearly. He says he will “follow the [aid] formula” but doesn’t acknowledge that this would cost $2 billion. Murphy has made so many other spending promises that he is lying about “following the formula” as far as I’m concerned.

LOST said:

I understand the controversy about standardized tests and understand their utility and also how they can be over used. I'm also skeptical of Charter Schools, but am no expert on the subject and remain open minded.

I support Organized Labor and don't see a significant difference between public and private sector employees. Workers are workers.

As to Gubernatorial candidates I'm more interested in their positions on taxes, infra structure and social issues.

Thanks. It appears that you prefer Sweeney. I will wait to see rebuttals from supporters of Fulop and Murphy.

I am actually ready for a Trenton insider as Governor. I think one of the problems is that we have had all these people come in, often with good intentions, but with no experience in how Trenton works and not be able to get the nitty gritty things done.

I think that there is a reason that the most effective recent governorship was when Codey had two years in the office, (though he had the additional advantage of being Senate President at the same time)

one would hope if Furlop was elected, he would be fighting for what was best for the whole state and insist on JC doing a reval as well as revisiting what school districts should be receiving extra aid via the Abbot school district ruling. Clearly, Hoboken and JC should not be considered Abbot school districts any longer.

I don't trust Sweeney -- and I think he is too much of an insider.

As I stated before, I would gladly support Codey if he would only run again but he seems to have no interest in spending the time needed for fundraising and campaigning (and really don't blame him)